Pixelvision Open Source Project

[Rob Lohman]

I've moved the thread (with redirect from the old forum) to the alternative
imaging forum. Have fun!

[Daniel Kohl]

Thanks Rob,

It makes more sense to have it here I guess. Anyway now it's in both places now. Good idea Roger.

[Michael Gibbons]

So, Sean could you give us an update on the progress of your technicle wizardry?

[Sean McHenry]

Well, between shooting/engineering for work and tthe whole DVC3 thing, I had set it down and almost forgotten about it. I have yet to find anyone that can supply a belt for the drive.

I am going out location scouting today so maybe I'll try to run some footage of it in downtown Columbus here. I have also been working on building my server to host my video files in-house so if I get the chance to shoot some, I'll post a note here and post the video where we can see it.

I will have to use the video out and run that into my cheap-o TRV22 to capture it on miniDV. Cool thing is, then I can bring it directly into the Avid and play a little.

Thanks for reminding me about it. I have the stills in my camera phone from when I opened it up and I'll build a little page about it and put it up tonight.

Stay tuned.

Sean

[Sean McHenry]

OK, found out a bit of bad news this weekend when I went to hook the Pixelvision to the miniDV camcorder I was heading out with to scout locations, the signal level into the DV camera isn't hot enough to record. I did hook it up to my VHS deck at home and it will record that way so I will do some shooting in the house this week and string it together and post it.

I think it needs the 1 transistor amp option.

Now where's that 50' BNC cable...

Sean

[Jason J. Gullickson]

This is a bit off-topic but I was reading the thread and it shed some light on a problem we've been having with some PXL-2000 footage.

We are trying to capture some PXL footage from VHS tapes that are about 15 years old. Normally we use a Pyro box to capture VHS footage, but when we feed it this PXL stuff it doesn't see it. Is it possible that the signal from the VHS tape has the same low-voltage problem?

If so, is there a "cheap" way to address it? We've resorted to using a different capture system (that is less sensitive) but the resulting quality, well it sucks :)

[Sean McHenry]

You probably need a strictly analog capture card. Try to find a Miro DC-30 or some other older Pinnacle capture card. Maybe some graphics card like the ATI All-In-Wonder series would do it.

As soon as you capture as a high quality AVI file, drop it in a good NLE and bring the levels to spec. You should then be able to spit out a DV compatible file.

There may be issues with your sync pulses and so on but you would need to get a qualified bench tech with a scope to check out the waveform. Look for a studio or friend that has a Waveform monitor and a "Proc Amp". There should be a way to save the footage. The cludged video output from these isn't really setup correctly to be a true NTSC signal.

If you are in need of an anlaog capture card, I happen to have a Miro DC-30 I could sell off really cheap...

Try going in strictly analog or find a proc amp. Let me know what you find.

------- EDIT -----------

PS, a truely analog capture card will not use Firewire or USB to get the video/audio into your PC. You need a PCI based capture card that would be installed in the PC. At least that's my theory.

Sean